Climate Change Education | Thomas Isaac | TEDxSouthFayetteHS

[Music] you so I'd like to talk today about climate change education and what does that do to students perceptions of the world that's coming up for them this talk was actually inspired by another speaker that you're gonna hear in a little bit Julianne pick Chris who's actually kind of hiding right back there right now Julianne was a student in my exploratory science class last year and after our unit on climate change he started asking a lot of questions why is it that we don't know more about what's really going on what can we do to be able to affect change in this space and it really got me to thinking this generation the high schoolers in here have grown up all the time knowing about climate change this has been part of their vocabulary since they grew up for those of us the room like me I'm old I'm a Boomer no boomers in here all right I'm the oldest one in the room we learned about climate change over a very long period of time it's something that sort of slowly crept in to our national vocabulary but for them it's always been there and so the question that I had to ask is how does this affect their perceptions of the future that they look forward to so that's what I wanted to investigate now standing of the link between climate change and fossil fuels has gone back for at least a hundred years this wasn't an article that appeared in popular science back in 1912 that asked the question is burning coal changing our climate did this make it part of the national conversation no probably not go forward a little bit 1930s popular science again lists an article that goes and talks about is our climate changing is fossil fuel to blame for this but again is this part of the national conversation nah not really at this point if anything it's probably just a little bit of a curiosity you go from there through the 1940s the war years the 1950s probably not a much going on in terms of climate change research and climate change discussion you move a little bit forward into the 1960s the evolution of the modern environmental movement really didn't focus on climate and climate change it was focused much more instead on air quality water quality land use issues and really didn't focus on climate change now in this time period in the 70s there was more and more scientific research being done about climate and climate change but it really wasn't part of the national vote the 1980s comes along dis man James Henson he's a NASA scientist and he started looking at how does the co2 in Venus's atmosphere turn it into the hellscape that it is most metals will melt on the surface of Venus Venus isn't hotter because it's that much closer to the Sun Venus is hotter because of its atmosphere so he turned his attention from studying Venus to studying earth how does the co2 in the Earth's atmosphere start to affect our climate and he finally ends up testifying in 1988 before Congress including at that time then Senator Al Gore and he gives the Congress a pretty blunt assessment our climate is changing not as going to it is and is changing now and is going to change much more in the future does this necessarily then push climate change right into our national vocabulary no not entirely but got to admit front page of the New York Times above the fold this starts to bring climate change as something that we talk about is the society more to the forefront through the 90s time of President Clinton Vice President Al Gore there's more discussion about climate change but most of what goes on through the period of the 90s really pushes that back until we move into the 2000 at that point Al Gore fresh off for presidential victory decides to spend a little bit more time focusing on educating people about climate and climate change and so first with a book then followed up in a movie An Inconvenient Truth he starts really forcing climate change into the national conversation this is where it really finally becomes part of everybody's vocabulary but the these high school students most of whom were born 2000 to 2004 in 2006 there what at best six years old so how does having this part of the National vocabulary when you're still a child really start to affect your perceptions of the world your perceptions of what your future is going to lead to really kind of brings me to my basic premise what do these students know about climate change and does climate change education presenting them the actual facts and evidence using scientific reasoning does this change their perception of climate change and how might that might be different then my particular perception of climate change being the old person that I am so think about this group of students right here think about these 14 15 16 year-olds who from the time that they are old enough to read the cover of a book our reading about the end of ice they're reading about water is coming they're reading least reading book covers about temperature change extinction how does this change their perceptions about what kind of world they're going to grow up in so I'm a school - educator scientists and they said how do we tackle this problem so what I decided to do was to turn on and take my existing exploratory science class some of whom are here today thanks for coming out guys and use them as guinea pigs and so what did I do is a good educator I assess educated them and then reassess how that education change their perceptions so these are the kinds of questions that I ask them what is it you know what it is do you know what the causes and effects are do you know whether there's an ability to be able to change anything do you know what are we have to do to be able to affect the kind of change that we need ask those questions educate them and then reassess questions again to see how they've changed and that was really my object most importantly last on that list how does this make you feel does knowing the facts does knowing the evidence does knowing the consequences change how they feel about their future and that was really sort of a big question so what did we learn we focused on a variety things we looked at the causes of climate change and the feedbacks we looked at what are the current evidence what are the predictions of the future and probably more importantly as what are the things that need to happen to be able to start to put control on our changing climate so we started with the obvious what are the mechanics of climate change looking at the energy budget of the earth the inflows and outflows of energy the real problem of course is in the red circle right there it's this back radiation greenhouse gases increasing the amount of energy coming back to the earth you understand what is the actual process of climate change we looked at the evidence from co2 emissions co2 concentrations air temperature water temperature pretty much everything to do with ice changes in habitat changes in weather from there we started looking at where is this going what is our future hold for us and of course the most important question that you have to ask when you're talking about what does our future hold for us is what actions are we going to take and all the questions all come back to what are we going to do is what that future looks like depends upon what we choose to do and begin we looked at everything temperature sea levels precipitations weather patterns disease vectors and so on and so on and so on then lastly we looked at what do we have to do what are the steps for mitigation that we need to be able to accomplish to be able to put some control over the level of temperature increase that we're going to be looking at over the next 50 to 100 years play game the game comes from Princeton University the climate mitigation Institute and they developed this game called the stabilization wedges game this is a game that they designed for policymakers the policymakers can understand the scope and scale of the problem and be able to have rational discussions about what the choices are to be able to control our changing climate I'm not going to point to too many graphs but this is a few of them in the red line you could see the increase in global co2 emissions per year now topping out in excess of 8 gigatons per year that's 8 billion tons of co2 which we're putting into our atmosphere every year and if we don't change our emissions behavior follow the red dotted line up that's where we're headed which would eventually lead to temperature increases between nine and eleven degrees Fahrenheit catastrophic consequence so the first question you have to ask is can we stabilize this at least can we stop increasing the amount of co2 that we're putting into the atmosphere and that's what's represented by the blue dotted line there we've got to at least stop growing our emission so that blue triangle up there Oh big blue triangle represents the amount of co2 which we need to not emit in the next 50 years my angle represents 200 gigatons that's 200 billion tons of co2 which we need to not emit over the next 50 years so how do you do that in elephant one bite at a time so the strategy of the stabilization game is to take this huge amount of co2 that has to be eliminated and break it into eight pieces or eight wedges hence the name of the game each one of those wedges the blue wedges represents 25 Giga tons of carbon that won't be going into the atmosphere over the next 50 years does that stop climate change No it only stabilizes our emission it doesn't stabilize our temperature so in addition to that they have to have another four wedges shown there in green excuse me those additional four wedges are what are needed to be able to start bringing our carbon emissions down to the point where the total increase in temperature over the next 50 years will only be held to two degrees C or three point six degrees Fahrenheit that three point six degrees Fahrenheit two degrees C that's the threshold above which we start really talking about catastrophic consequent two degrees are we still looking at significant changes absolutely but we're starting looking at catastrophic consequences above that so these 12 wedges which they need to come up with what do they represent they represent a lot of different things tripling the world's nuclear power plant capacity cutting in half the number of vehicles on the road and making every car twice as efficient as it is today making every building on the planet as efficient as possible covering the entire state of Texas with windmills covering the entire state of Massachusetts with solar panels and planting enough grass to be able to make ethanol that covers the entire country of India replacing 800 third of the world's capacity of coal-fired plants with gas fire plants being able to establish 50 Giga tons of carbon sequestration and it's not which one of these do they have to choose between as we don't need to do one of these we need to do all of so that brings me to my premise and my premises for this age of student who grows up in this environment how does your education on these facts and evidence change your perceptions of the world in which you're growing up in and how might that be different than mine or yours Matt was really sort of the premise that I started out looking at this so again my class is guinea pigs they ask these questions what did I know how did I know it where they get their information from and then again the most important question is how does this make them feel so here's the questions that I asked how would you describe the extent to which you know what climate change means good students at South Fayette fair number of them had some idea before education after climate change education the students are able to learn and understand that they have some idea of what climate change is when asked the question about do you believe that the climate of our world is changing some of them are quite uncertain before after climate change education those that they believe the climate is changing agree or strongly agree accounts for 9 out of 10 when we look at this question of what's the cause this is what we hear all the time right oh I think the climb is changing but it's just part of natural sight the most recent evidence says that the probability that climate change is not happening and not caused by man or look that around the probability that climate change is happening and caused by man has reached five sigma those of you in the business community understand the concept of Six Sigma it is reached five Sigma which basically says the probability that climate change isn't happening and is not caused by man is now less than one part in 1 million good South Fayette students after climate change education after examining the facts and evidence now understand that climate change is anthropogenic caused by man then we ask this question can we do anything about the rate of climate change should we do anything about the rate of climate change some hesitancy although good 3/4 of people say yes after that that percentage rises a bit more interestingly though when you start getting the question of should government's require people to be able to make changes to be able to reduce our climate emissions quite a bit of disagreement and interestingly enough from before education to after education not really much of a change instead the students seemed to favor voluntary measures to be able to put climate emissions under control so from before to after education you can see somewhat of a growth but again still not a huge change so then I started asking questions about how does this make you feel so the question that I really asked was to what extent are you excited about your future in blue shown before climate change education in red afterwards yeah I'm sorry I think climate change is a little bit of a wet rag on there excitement sorry about that guys a little bit of a shift to less excited about their future but when you ask the question are they fearful an interesting result those that are very fearful or somewhat fearful actually declines very fearful and those that are not fearful at all also declines it's sort of a movement towards the middle that's the next question which is really about are they enthusiastic interestingly enough a movement towards very enthusiastic with the exception of the top end of the scale you let me ask the question are they distressed and I looked at this and I was a little surprised given the other results so very distressed over here too not distressed at all and the interesting thing is the movement towards less stress less distress about their future does this tell us that climate change education while I may not like what I see at least I understand it at least I understand what needs to be done and then probably most interesting as you move from there is what does this mean you're going to do so the last question that I asked was does this make you feel called to action so as an older adult as a science teacher as a human I was very pleased to see this result so while this group may not be particularly excited about their future or enthusiastic about their future given what they're looking at they're actually less stressed about it with more education and they feel more call-to-action with more education and that call-to-action what's ultimately going to propel the changes that we need in the UK Europe students are leaving class and going to the streets to protest they are calling upon their governments to do more about climate and climate change in the United States Juliana versus the United States a case is being tried in Oregon ten high school and college students are suing the United States government because the United States government's lack of action on climate change is impinging upon their right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness this type of action this type of call to action for this generation is what is going to take be able to create the changes that we need in our world and really the question that you have to ask and we change this image our future is in their hand you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 9,218

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Global Issues, Climate Change, Education, Global education, Global issues, Students, Teaching

Id: gYfDAIy0-So

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019